Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

An Image of Darwin, Carrying on His Work

Less than a week before the Darwin show opened, the most thrilling live display was neither the big, sleepy iguana nor the pair of Galápagos tortoises, but rather an Englishman, a living descendant of Darwin himself. He is Randal Keynes, a conservationist and writer now living in London. He is Darwin's great-great-grandson. That is, his grandmother was Darwin's granddaughter. He is also the great-nephew of the economist John Maynard Keynes. He is no longer on display.

On Tuesday, he stood under a famous portrait of Darwin and pointed to a little bump next to Darwin's nose, and then to his own bump. He is 57, thin and he has no beard. But if you look for resemblance, you'll see that he has a trace of Darwin's jutting chin and brow, too.

Nonetheless, Mr. Keynes -- whose voice can be heard at the end of the exhibition reading from "On the Origin of Species" and who discovered the writing case of Darwin's daughter Annie, who died at age 10 -- says he does not feel the same pressure to carry on Darwin's work that his cousins with the name Darwin do.

"They must feel it as a duty," he said. "I have a different surname. I only talk about Darwin because I choose to."

What sort of kinship does he feel? The connection is through his grandmother and their summer vacations. "I spent my summers with her in the country," around Suffolk, Mr. Keynes said. There, they talked about the summer holidays she spent with Darwin at Down House, where Darwin lived and worked most of his life.

The great-great-grandson of the father of evolution said his descent from Darwin earned him a lot of silly comments from strangers.

"I get more jokes than anything else, about being descended from a monkey," he said -- and not from people who oppose evolution, but from anybody. Although there is no controversy in England about evolution, he explained, "people are uneasy with the idea of being closely related to the great apes, and they try to shoot the messenger."